


As Green A Place As She Could Hope For

by LadyVictory



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 17:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4445918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVictory/pseuds/LadyVictory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Furiosa grieves, and The Sisters comfort, and together they find the Green Place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Green A Place As She Could Hope For

**Author's Note:**

> AN 1: I am the worst at summaries.  
> AN 2: Unbeta'd. Sorry.  
> AN 3: They are not things, and so I cannot own them. I certainly do not profit off of them.

She screams, voice tearing its way from her throat like a sandstorm. She screams until she has no breath left, then inhales – great big gulps – and screams again.

Soon she is howling; howling in agony, in desolation, like a wounded animal caught in a trap and left to die of exposure. Her heart shudders violently in her chest, caught in the vice of her sorrow and being slowly crushed, and she knows that surely this is how she dies. Alone with her grief on the sand.

The Sisters watch her for long moments, huddling together against the wind and her howls, unsure of what to do as their savior unravels before them. Their hearts bleed for their Furiosa – they too know what it is like to have the last of their innocent hope striped away.

It is that more than anything that makes them go to her, one by one.

The Knowing moves first, but that is no surprise. She and Angharad have always been closest to the enigmatic Imperator, never intimidated by her brooding or her scowl, and with the other woman gone, Toast knows it falls to her to be first.

She stalks forward with jerky motions, trying for confidence but feeling the sounds coming from Furiosa as blows against her skin. Still, she arrives and sits behind the older woman’s back, wrapping tan arms around her tense waist and laying her wind chapped face against Furiosa’s scorching hot back.

The taller woman’s animal howling turns back to human screams, desperate and desolate still, but she leans back into the body wrapped around hers instead of fighting.

The Knowing rests her lips against the brand mark at the Imperator’s neck – not kissing, just pressing, as if she can force it back to smooth unblemished skin – and she waits.

Capable is next. She slinks forward, sitting next to the screaming woman’s right and taking her good arm into her lap. She gently pries open the clenched fist, wincing at the blood – as red of Capable’s own hair – that wells up in the half-moon indents left by Furiosa’s nails. She interlocks their fingers and rubs her thumb against the suffering woman’s.

Furiosa wants nothing more dearly than to squeeze her hand back into a fist again – to collapse and condense her whole body into the smallest form possible, as if it will protect her from reality or at least keep her from shattering into a million pieces. But she would never willingly hurt any of these women, who are her charges but also the closest she has ever come to having friends in over 7000 days. Instead, she takes their joined hands and presses them to her chest, which is tight and hot as if a band of white hot iron was slowly crushing it.

The soft paleness of Capable’s knuckles eases the feeling a bit, if only enough to allow the older woman to take in larger gasps of air. Her screams are shouts now; stunted, short barks and deep, keening groans that claw their way out of her body.

After a few moments, Capable tucks herself awkwardly into Furiosa’s side, having to loop her arm across her own chest to bring the taller woman’s about her shoulders. She doesn’t want to let go, not even for a moment, and she sighs when Furiosa holds her close, both of them shivering despite the heat.

The Dag glides, like a wraith or a desert spirit, to the Imperator’s left side – her bad side. The ethereal woman has always had a fascination with the Imperator’s missing limb, watching the space where her arm once was with a tilted head, or reaching out with thin tattooed fingers to run along the air where a forearm would be.

Furiosa has always been tolerant with her curiosities where she is defensive – even aggressive – with others. Somehow she knows, The Dag sees the absent arm as a part of Furiosa; a part of her completeness instead of a lack. They have developed an understanding without using words, as if the older woman knows she can trust the dreamy creature with her phantom limb.

The white haired woman slithers under Furiosa’s truncated arm, pressing her pale face to the side of the Imperator’s breast and wrapping an arm around her stomach so that it rests on Toast’s darker one. She begins to hum under her breath, something like a long forgotten lullaby, and the despair in Furiosa’s chest lessens from debilitating to excruciating.

It still feels like a hot poker in her side, forced through her ribs and lungs into the place where her heart should be, but her wailing turns to dry sobbing and she can finally breathe like a human being again.

Cheedo is last, but only by moments. She comes around and curls up in Furiosa’s lap, staring up at her with wide, trembling eyes. Reaching out with sun-kissed fingers, she cups the Imperator’s cheek, then her neck – The Knowing’s lips brush her knuckles as she does – and then finally the back of her head. She pulls her down until their foreheads touch, as she saw Furiosa and the Vuvalini woman do. She watches.

Furiosa’s eyes sting, full of salt water that does not fall. Her keens turn to whimpers, deep in her chest, and she leans her weight against the Sisters, allowing them to hold her up, to help keep her together. She is so very tired.

The Sisters cry for her, silently but no less than when Angharad fell. Their tears are hot, soaking into Furiosa’s shirt and skin, burning her. They cry for their fallen sister again, and they cry for the green place they will never see. They cry for the Many Mothers, who are lost to them now. They cry for each other.

Closing her eyes, Furiosa nuzzles them all; first Cheedo with her forehead, then The Dag and Capable with her chin, and finally The Knowing, even though she has to twist and crane her neck to reach the darker woman with her cheek. The Sisters stop crying slowly, sniffling and pressing closer, and their heat is a comfort and not a curse.

One by one, the remaining Vuvalini come forward and brush their hands against Furiosa’s shoulders and head, before collecting the Sisters, until she is alone again.

She takes deep, centering breaths and stands.

The Valkyrie is beside her, the creaking bulk of the prosthetic in one hand. Furiosa shakes her head; she is not ready yet for the weight it brings. Her Val – older and windblown and more scarred, but no less her Val – smiles sadly and nods. She drops the thing of metal and leather and reaches out with her calloused hands, pulling the short hair woman into her body.

“My Furiosa,” she murmurs, and it sounds like ‘I’m sorry.’

The Imperator shakes her head, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly.

“My Val,” she whispers back, and it sounds like ‘I’m home,’ and The Valkyrie sighs and nods and holds her infinitely closer.

 

Later, after Furiosa and Max have spoken in the dark, she and The Valkyrie find each other under the stars. It is both sweet and bitter, full of rediscovered passion and lost opportunities. The sands are rough, but their kisses are soft, and when they are done they lie together in the cab of the War Rig.

One by one, the Sisters join them to sleep, except Capable who curls up with Nux in the lookout cabin.

Furiosa sits in the middle of the backseat, Val tucked under her good arm against her chest. Cheedo opens and closes the door quietly and slips under her stump. Soft fingers reach up to tangle in Furiosa’s shirt and stroke tenderly at The Valkyrie’s hair.

The Knowing climbs into the driver’s seat, back against the door, one arm thrown over the worn leather to hang in the air. The Valkyrie smiles and toys with her dark fingers, tickling Toast’s palm until she snorts and tangles them together, squeezing briefly before letting go and resting her hand against the seat to discourage further harassment.

The Dag creeps in last, insinuating herself between her darker sister’s legs and settling on her chest. Toast hooks a finger from her free hand around one of the pale woman’s loosely curled ones, but knows better than to hold her down in any way.

They all sigh gently in turn, and the torment in Furiosa’s chest becomes an aching throb. The green place is gone – turned black and spoiled and muddy – but this is almost as good.

They sleep, finding a tentative and tender sort of peace that sits like new skin over a freshly healed wound.

 

Later still, when Furiosa wakes in the infirmary at the Citadel, and the pain in her side is nothing compared to the agony of her heart, she opens her eye – the other swollen and uncooperative – and sees her sisters, old and new, gathered around her. One by one they stroke her face and touch her hair.

Her Vuvalini sisters touch their fingers to their own lips and then the fingers gently to hers, then more firmly to the stubble of her hair. It is an old gesture she vaguely remembers, a gesture of love and healing – as if they give her a part of their spirit to aid her in her recovery.

The Knowing presses a soft dry kiss to her good shoulder, breathing her in as if Furiosa was a flower that could wither and disappear at any moment, and mutters “we’re sorry,” against her skin.

Capable presses a kiss above where the Impertaor’s heart would be, if it most of it wasn’t bleeding and dead out in the desert. The red haired woman murmurs something that could be ‘we’re here’ but probably is nothing more than sorrowful sounds.

The Dag kisses her own fingers and touches Furiosa’s bandages ever so lightly, leaning over her and whispering a prayer. She gazes at the injured woman like she hung the stars in the night sky, like she is the wind that blows away bad dreams and brings rain.

Cheedo comes last, leaning over and kissing her sweat soaked forehead. The young woman’s lips are warm and chapped, and feel like what Furiosa imagines a butterfly’s wings might. The dark haired woman smiles sadly, full of something that could be guilt. It breaks what is left of Furiosa’s heart.

“You saved us,” the wounded woman whispers, voice raw and sand blasted. She needs Cheedo to know that she is not The Fragile, but The Brave.

Cheedo shakes her head. “No,” she says, then pauses, smile becoming lighter, with a guarded hint of wonder. “We saved each other; all of us.”

Furiosa nods, almost imperceptivity. Hot salt water leaks from her eyes.

The pain – the _other_ pain, not from the knife – is there, unable to be dulled by any drug they have. It is shaped not like a blade, but pale scars on windblown skin, and feathers in long wild hair instead. But her sisters sit with her, close and comforting in silence, and she can breathe without screaming, and that is a greener place than she ever truly dared believe in.


End file.
